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Title: Poetic Gems by William McGonagall, Billy Connolly ISBN: 0-7156-3151-9 Publisher: Duckworth Publishing Pub. Date: July, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.95

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)

Rating: 5
Summary: O mickle rhymer
Comment: O mickle rhymer of Caledonian race!
Alas! that some, according to what I have heard, hold in disgrace -
For up to your Muse they can very seldom if ever measure,
No matter by night as well as by day they endeavor,
At least many honest folk do aver.

Great Bard of Tay! 'tis harder than it look
To pen the like of what is contained in this book, [ed.: watch it, that almost scanned]
Which I venture to say, without the least fear of rebuke, will never be overtook.
Ye should be rhyming still, and also alive!
No stone of Parnassus (sacred Mount of poets) left unturn'd : I'll give it five.

McGonagall - who was as Scottish as haggis, not Irish - could have written that, probably more simply and directly, in minutes. I won't tell you how long it took me but it involved a lot of walking around muttering to myself. George Orwell identified good bad poetry, such as Kipling's. McGonagall's is bad bad poetry - so bad it's good. There is a kind of anti-genius here. He could write vivid and engaging prose in naive style, but he resorted to prose only to introduce his volumes of verse. 'Poetic Gems' is the first of three volumes he produced, containing among other unprovoked assaults on Euterpe his famous paean 'The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay', and his even more famous lament when the bridge fell down shortly afterwards. Unkind readers have used the word disaster for both. One thing you can be sure of : he never consciously wrote an ironic line. With the right publicity, he could play big in Middle America.

Fellow-citizens of Dundee,
Isn't it really very nice
To think of James Scrymgeour trying
To rescue fallen creatures from the paths of vice?

(Well, I don't know; but save one for me, Jimmy.)